A Friendly Diamond Competition

[paappleb]

Hey all. Been a while. For the longest time, I have been trying to convince a friend of mine that working with SketchUp with Twilight is so much easier than trying to model and render in Blender (for the majority of renderings he has done). After many discussions, we decided to do a little competition. We decided to do a realistic take on the diamonds from the indie game Minecraft (see screen shot). We were not comparing rendering times @ a specific resolution, only the final product. The only criteria was using unbiased methods and the same base model. The Twilight render was done on Easy 10 108 passes at 1920x911 (downsized for upload) with studio hdr. Omni lights were inserted inside the cubes for increased caustics. I tweaked the crystal color to closer resemble the original image and increased the poly-count of the stone surfaces, smoothed, and then UV mapped with Artisan a hi-res stone texture and created the bump and spec maps. I like how things turned out but I think the individual diamonds could be better. I know that unfortunately Twilight can not currently render light inside an object (Twilight version 2? ), but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated to achieve a similar look and simply to improve the overall quality of the render. Thanks.

[Fletch]

This aqua color looks like something other than a diamond.
Lighting a scene like this is the key to a great render. Easy 10 is absolutely the best choice if you are using a true diamond material that involves dispersion (like from the Gems Material Library provided by default with Twilight Render.
Subject: Flaming diamond

[paappleb]

I agree the most non-realistic element is the color of the "diamond." I was going for the color closer to the provided image, but I will run it through with the Gem Library diamond. I had done a few lighting tests with some spots but was getting some really odd dispersion. I'll run a couple of tests and re-post.

[Fletch]

have you seen this diamond model in SU format (scene by Massimo)
Subject: Diamonds, Wine Glass, and Spoon by Massimo

[paappleb]

Actually yes. It's been so long since I've taken a look at that thread. I downloaded that hdr quite a while ago. Totally forgot about it. Thanks for the refresher.

[Fletch]

Here's a modified scene with spots on the diamonds for the 'sparkles'.
See the link above for info about how to get the HDR if you want to replicate this render. But I provide more for the spot light settings on the diamond.

[paappleb]

Hey Fletch:

Re-rendered with the diamond gem setting with the ennis hdr. Let render over the weekend for 520 threads and reduced the gamma and light levels to .7 for contrast (520 is a bit overkill but when you have tickets for Beethoven's 5th Symphony and a night-on-the-town in Philadelphia time flies by.) Definitely a more realistic approach than before (I know the light glow from the cubes are not realistic, but stylistically I like the effect the omni light produces.) Thanks for the help.

[Fletch]

Very very nice render.
You could always change the color of the omni light to be the blue glow.

[massimo]

Nice work paappleb.
Maybe the spots are useful in order to increase the effect, but you can get nice "sparkles" also with the HDRI only.
Here is a try with a very quick and rough setup.

[paappleb]

Thanks massimo. Gave your suggestion a test run. Changed the HDRI to a lovely sunset from http://www.hdri4free.com/ and removed all other light sources. Got some very interesting results. Easy 10 for 138 passes. No change to gamma or light levels.